REAL-WORLD INSIGHTS

SIGN UP TO OUR BLOG

What do Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Pot Noodles, Persil, Dove soap and Marmite have in common? They are all made by Unilever. What does Unilever and Tesco have in common? Dave Lewis, Tesco’s current boss, spent most of his career at Unilever before being poached by Tesco. What does all of this have to do with negotiating? Well, having been in a stand-off that threatened to damage both parties, heads were banged together on Thursday 13 October and a deal was done. We at Scotwork have constantly maintained that external factors are the most common cause of the kinds of conflicts that need negotiated solutions and what happened between Tesco and Unilever is a classic example. External factors do not come much bigger than Brexit...

I want you to imagine that you have been preparing for a negotiation and you have got to the point were you have to declare your financial proposal to paper. The bit that is going to be critical, maybe even the most important (maybe), is the price.
We could drift tangentially off point here and talk about things that may be much more important than price, like availability, quality, terms, etc., etc., we won’t. But you should...

Whilst I love the sight of a Chinese lantern drifting off aimlessly into a moonlit night on a lovely summers evening, I am not sure I will ever light one again.
The apocalyptic blaze caused by one of these burning lanterns landing on the Jayplus recycling unit in Smethwick near Birmingham was captured live on CCTV. The resulting wall of flames could be seen from 80 miles away and the damage cost a reported £6 million. Not to mention the risk to life and limb bourn by the heroic fire service trying to manage the disaster.

In a sign of unabated consumer demand at the luxury end of the market $29 million was paid yesterday at auction for a 1982 painting entitled ‘Untitled’ (that must have taken some deep thinking) by Jean-Michel Basquiat (who he?). The estimated price before the auction was $25 million. You can see the painting here: http://bloom.bg/14muexk. I must say that it reminded me of much of the recent oeuvre of Millie, my 3 year old granddaughter, in what the family have come to describe as her Nursery Period. I don’t claim to know much about art, but I can think of better ways to spend $29m...

The most frequent request asked of Scotwork consultants is ‘Teach me how to know I have paid the right price’. It comes from a lifetime of self-doubt; that although the negotiated deal looks like a good one, satisfies the need, resolves the conflict, addresses the issues and falls within the levels of affordability, there is a demon nagging at the back of the brain. ‘Sucker!’ says the demon, ‘you could have done much better than that’...

Anjana – a sales leader with an IT firm – is busy preparing for negotiations with a large bank on renewing her firm’s contract with them. Given it is a decent sized deal, Anjana has been preparing for these negotiations over the last several days by interlocking with the account delivery teams, getting buy-ins from the senior leadership & CFO on commercials, getting a handle on the likely strategies from the competition etc. It is no surprise, given the rigour of her preparation, that Anjana was feeling confident about her meeting with the Client CIO.